Translated material
Factory for the production of meanings
A book has appeared, collecting reflections on television over the past three years
Television today is our everything; broadcast brings home not only news, but also all interpretative versions of events, all faces, all public institutions, which are the only way they become reality for the majority of Russians. Even the conversations of close people are sprinkled with quotes from TV much more abundantly than with references to personal experience.However, no one seems to think about how television production actually works, what exactly it produces, where this product then goes, how it functions in the minds of the masses. In general, there is nowhere to read even a regular review of a new series - the reader can find out which of the artists starred in it, how they felt and what funny stories happened to them, but a real analysis of this is important, because millions watch it, no one produces works. Modern culture seems to ignore the huge layer of plots, relationships, characters that the television machine produces.
There are no special television magazines in the country, very few books on television theory, no open audience research at all, and no studies of the influence of the television product on the masses are conducted, except for those carried out by the television people themselves for their own practical purposes.
Therefore, the collection “Television: Directing Reality,” published late last year by the Art of Cinema magazine and the National Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters, is perhaps a unique attempt to do the work that state and public institutions have abandoned. Having collected texts published in “The Art of Cinema” in 2004-2007, the collection’s compiler and editor-in-chief of the magazine, Daniil Dondurey, demonstrated a level of theoretical understanding of television production that is possible in principle today, but is not in demand.
For several years, the Art of Cinema magazine has ordered articles on television from specialists in various fields, professional participants in the process and completely outside observers, held round tables on current topics, and interviewed channel managers and series creators. The result is, in some way, a portrait of the phenomenon in dynamics - changes accumulate quickly. Once collected together, the materials acquired a new quality, as individual remarks formed into a general conversation. Moreover, discussions at which television producers and presenters, critics, sociologists, and journalists meet perfectly complement the monologues of theorists and publicists.
The book has five chapters: “Reflection of reality” - about the specifics of the interaction of television laws in Russian reality, that is, theory; “Understanding History” - reflections on how the past is presented today; “Formats” - divided into several subsections to monitor the state of television genres; “Feedback” is about the relationship with the viewer; and finally, “Technology” - perhaps the most interesting chapter - about how exactly a television kitchen functions and is built on.
Against the general background of solid empirics, such an attempt to discuss the laws of the most important cultural phenomenon of time, an ideological tool and a leisure filler looks like a real event.
The main plot of the book is that all participants in the conversation seem to be achieving the same goal, looking for the key to understanding what is happening. What causes the ratings of one program to rise and the ratings of another to fall? What is more important - rating or share and can a high rating be considered a real measurement of success? What bait does the viewer catch? And can television create artistic values?
Television, contrary to the opinion of some of its creators, cannot be reduced to technology, although it inevitably depends on it. And in texts about him it is impossible not to touch on those general problems that inevitably end up ingrained in television. Therefore, in conversations about marketing conducted by the heads of the TNT channel, Dmitry Troitsky and Alexander Dulerain, the topic of artistic significance and a debate arises about whether television is a mirror of reality or whether it itself shapes consciousness, and therefore the behavior of the masses. And the director of commercials, Sergei Osipyan, cites the example of the Samsung advertising company, which, in his opinion, is only more aggressive than the Central Election Commission (the conversation took place in 2004), and comes to the conclusion that the main thing in the advertising business is, without changing anything in reality, just take one idea out of the consumer's head and put another into it.
Television, disassembled into its component parts - ratings, advertising, series, news, etc., really turns out to be not just a part of our life, but also an active manipulator, accustoming its consumers to passivity, to replacing the human perception of reality with the whole set of normal reactions , to swallow voids, to reject mechanisms such as compassion and participation.
The absence in culture of such an important component as reflection on the most pressing problems of social consciousness and subconscious, that is, television, indicates its low development. Moreover, as the collection “Television: Directing Reality” shows, in the country there are not only theorists capable of discussing this, but also practitioners themselves show a clear desire to understand the laws of their profession, understand the relationship between intention and its execution, and discover the consequences of their actions. There is not enough space to realize these desires and opportunities; there is no political will to create a theoretical, intelligent publication focused on studying the television world. Of course, film studies journals lead a rather miserable life, theater studies are even worse, music is very bad, and the visual arts are a little better. But no matter how sad their fate is, they exist. Television, rich, well-fed, fed on state farming, turns out to be generally unable to support an institution whose function should be its own self-awareness. The only subject of study that TV bosses are interested in so far is viewer preferences, and the only tool is telemetry, that is, audience research. But no matter how important this short data is about what programs a given group of the population prefers at a given time of day, the simple logic of business development presupposes knowledge of goals and conditions. I'm not even talking about such complex and indirect mechanisms of influence as knowledge of the laws of social development, which television is having an increasingly strong impact on.
Yes, such a publication where Russian television workers could simply “share their experience”, where critics and theorists would break away from discussing particulars and take up trends, where a school of television journalism would appear and articles by Western researchers would be published, while the practitioners themselves would be torn away. It is clear that with today’s prosperity of localism and civil strife on large channels, they cannot have any common cause. And if such a publication, this professional organizer and agitator, had arisen at the behest of government bodies or through the efforts of public structures, it would have been a different country. It would definitely be better to live in.